Teenage Zombies - review

1960 (USA)

2015 Vinegar Syndrome with Revenge of the Virgins DVD R(0)

Contains spoilers. 

Now I knew revered b-movie specialist Jerry Warren came with a reputation to rival Ed Wood, and this movie in particular was ridiculed as one of the worst ever; but even I wasn't quite prepared for such incompetence and schlock. Definitely falling in the so dire it's good category, writer, director and producer Warren has truly excelled himself with a piece of cinema so cringe-worthy; and I'm saying this up front, just so god damn awful, that it, just like Ed Wood's endeavours, somehow transcends its own mediocrity to become watchable precisely for the reasons it fails. So yes, it's a 1/10 film, and yes all the things I'm just about to point out are as bad as they sound and it certainly won't appeal to all; but if you've got even a smidgen of the voyeur, then there might just be a fun booze fuelled evening to be had with this undisputed car crash of a movie.

It takes but ten minutes for Reg (Don Sullivan), Skip (Paul Pepper), Julie (Mitzie Albertson), and Pam (Brianne Murphy); four of the most insipid nondescript and asexual middle America teenager's ever to grace the screen to finish their milkshakes, sail out to the mysterious island™ and get themselves easily imprisoned by glamorous mad scientist Dr. Myra (Katherine Victor.) Another ten and we uncover her Eastern collaborators (I think it's all supposed to be Russian) and their plan to pop a nerve paralysing agent into the continent's water supply and turn every man, woman and child into a totally compliant slave. We also learn that each and every wide angle shot is going to clumsily staged and rehashed over and over, and each and every line of dialogue is going to end with a painful second or two of silence while the next actor cues his or her equally painful reply.

The story is incredibly thin, incoherent and awkward even by bad b-movie standards. A mysterious island with a top secret scientific facility with prison and lab that no one seems to know about; yet a fully stocked fridge, cocktails at noon and six kids who easily stumble across it all between water skiing sessions? Captives who pick locks, free themselves and even build an escape raft, instead choose to return to their cage to have a nap, and not make the little noise needed to free their girlfriends? Finally, Mitch Evans, a man in a rubber suit playing a zombie gorilla that's both one of the most truly ridiculous and amateurish monster scenes in all of cinema; and yet one the absolute screen-stealing highlights of the film. The other being Chuck Niles as Ivan the zombie, played somewhere between a stock Igor and the hulking voodoo slaves of the forties zombie plantation forays, and actually a highlight in the real sense; a single small shining piece of authenticity and competence in a wholly amateur affair.

It's that post-war, post dark-continent era that's seeing new scientific knowledge and theory replace magic and voodoo as the deep-rooted fear and methodology to take away a persons will and control. At heart it's still a forties / fifties Caribbean voodoo tale but now atoms, DNA and vaccines constitute the new unknown frontier and ask all the disturbing questions. Warren's Igor is the archetypical voodoo zombie; the perfect slave with a desire to work and obey, but very much alive and pre-Romero. It all starts well, with a good scene of multiple Romero-eque zombies spilling with menace and foreboding out over the landscape. But Dr Myra, an odd cross of Elvira, the perfect 60's housewife and the synonymous Scooby Doo villain and her plan, for all that's b-movie goofyness at its brazen best, is convoluted and a hodgepodge of ideas that merely drags out the already shallow ordeal. There phase 3, an inconsistent neuro-toxins leaving half; compliant and half teeming with rage; and a sudden shift to plan b and a zombie-inducing-formula that can be reversed. What initially showed some horror promise soon turns to Igor, the two girls who are briefly enslaved, and monkey-man to carry the threat, and it's all rather flat, and all scares, along with convincing fights or gunshots, are left firmly at the door.

Ultimately though, Teenage Zombies is perhaps for the purist, or the desperate, as there are better good / bad movies, and the good / bad bits are probably as not as numerous or funny as I think. Jerry Warren however one frames it, is a bad director and this is a bad film. Sharing Ed Wood's total lack of vision and inability to see fault or a reason to reshoot, each and every scene is a show-case for the entirely b-movie actors to clumsy position themselves and stutter their lines. Add to this the laughable action sequences; championed by the final 7 person brawl / wrestle in the secret lab, and it's easy to argue it's as bad, if not worse than Wood's classic. I can't however quite draw myself to recommend it the same way though. Plan 9 has Depp's Ed Wood film and nearly forty years of unrivalled infamy; it's untouchable as anything other than the myth it's become. Not many will have heard of Teenage Zombies and as such it hasn't earned the same reputation or pass, and it's difficult, if I'm honest, to argue for it as anything other than the awfully amateur, keenly low-budget and utterly unwatchable piece of 60s schlock that it is 3/10.

Steven@WTD.

Zoombies - review

2016 (USA)

2016 Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment DVD R(2)

Contains spoilers.

Zoombies is not a good film. In fact I'd be happy to argue that it's possibly the worst film I've looked at with a lazy nonsensical story, laughably bad effects and a general eye for detail Ed Wood would have been proud of. The Asylum are certainly setting themselves up as a modern day Troma willing to churn out any and all audaciously ridiculous idea as cheaply and amateurishly as possible. Actually that's not quite accurate and a little disingenuous to Troma; with Troma one at least feels there's some passion and pride in the all stupidity. With The Asylum one increasingly feels that not giving a damn is part of the process and that somehow actually not going to any lengths to hide production incompetence is best practice. One can also argue however, that you know exactly what you're getting when you sit down with a The Asylum 'straight to DVD'. For as bad as it will be, and it will be, just perhaps there's a small part of you that will embrace the chaos; will laugh as earnest actors sincerely try to make it work; and as a viewing party, as The Asylum films are not meant to be watched unaccompanied; support will be required; savour each and every new unashamedly cheap and awful idea and its delivery.

Everything you need to know about director Glenn Miller's Zoombies is delivered in the first ten minutes. There's an unopened zoo, some plucky kids on a zoology college internship, some earnest staff lead by Dr. Ellen Rogers (Kim Nielson), a man in a gorilla suit and some unknown highly contagious inter-species zombie virus. Let hilarity commence. Not that it probably matters but there's no real attempt at making the outbreak coherent or logical; some monkeys are sick, one has seizure, goes into cardiac arrest is given some epinephrine or something and comes back to life (we know this as the heart monitor that was never on the monkey starts beeping) as a rabid homicidal little shit on the extreme offensive. It's to the point, visceral and entertaining, if for all the wrongs reasons. Things soon escalate, as is the zombie way, with the addition of five or so other monkeys released from their cages and also inexplicably infected; there's screaming, killing and copious quantities of awfully fake CG blood and before you can say Sharknado 5, zoo security respond to the alarm, break the carefully controlled quarantine and let the carnage spill out to the rest of the zoo.

The film ultimately becomes one of cat and mouse; or what-ever painfully awful CG or prosthetic zombie animal insanity all involved best thought should drive the next round of hiding, screaming and falling over, and an ever-decreasing number of exaggerated disparate ill-suited Jurassic Park-esque survivors. There is an attempt at a larger narrative; of saving the world by stopping virus from reaching the aviary but this just leads to more confusion and head scratching; as wouldn't there be native birds around the park? And also I thought for a moment there would be some deeper narrative with the trio of Dr. Ellen Rogers, her daughter Thea (La La Nestor) and Kifo the Cross River Gorilla comically performed by Ivan Djurovic and some possible cure or empathetic break-through but any and all notions here were quickly dropped. In many ways Zoombies once it got going played it remarkably safe and dare I say, especially in the second half a tad derivative. Always silly, but always a tad lazy and obvious.

As said, if I was to stop, dissect and critique the film in any coherent or meaningful way things would soon turn ugly. Each and every scene always had one moment that flied in the face of logic and reason, and there were so many jaw dropping moments of disruptive cohesion with one scene directly contradicting the one before, that it would be easy to dismiss the whole thing as insulting and farcical. Even the virus itself asks more questions than it answers; like why it should be able to so quickly and virulently transfer between such differing species, yet leave humans unaffected? As I say though, looking at the film this way is nothing but an exercise in frustration and futility, though maybe there's another.

Sure it's laughably bad, sure it has CG effects that make your eyes bleed and a story that falls apart as soon as you give it any thought, but you know what; throughout the film I increasingly found myself looking forward to the next comedy star-trek bridge fall or unbelievable zombie animal. Whether it was the hilarious glass tapping parrots, the preposterous gorilla, the CG elephant ride, or even the intern falling hundreds of feet to his large explosive death; Miller does manage to somehow tap into that so bad it's good experience that it's almost impossible not to find some enjoyment. Also the main actors do a commendable job, able to not only retain straight faces but actually make the audience believe in them and give a damn as they face down each increasingly absurd situation. Look, I'm never going to say Zoombies is a good film, nor one I'd even recommend, but as a throwaway frivolous extremely silly and self-deprecating beer fuelled party flick perhaps there's enough to warrant a look - 4/10.

Steven@WTD.